


Hope is Evergreen

by falsechaos



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, F/M, Gen, Mpreg, Post-Canon Fix-It, Space Mom Allura (Voltron), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, biology who, no literally, the guy gets pregnant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsechaos/pseuds/falsechaos
Summary: Lance and Allura wake up after the war and the world keeps moving on. Sometimes, that simple blessing is the most glorious thing of all.
Relationships: Allura/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	Hope is Evergreen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soulstoned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulstoned/gifts).



“L’ra...” Lance groaned as he tried to burrow deeper into his nest of pillows. “S’bby...”

“I know, Lance.”

“L’rraaa...” His voice crept up an octave, bordering perilously close to a whine. “Kicking.” A blast of cold air hit Lance’s back and he bit his lips to keep from shrieking. He glared over his shoulder as Allura climbed out of bed even after she took the care to put the heavy blankets back.

She smiled back at him, eyes soft and pink marks radiant. That kept happening as the pregnancy advanced. A constant warm flush splashed across her cheeks and dusted her eyelashes in rose. “How are you feeling, Love?”

“Mmmph.” He ducked his head and tried to hide beneath the blankets. He heard the soft padding of her feet at the edge of the bed as she walked around to his side. Easy enough for her to walk without him knowing it, without even the void of silence to mark where she should be. She did it for him as he did for her. Better to know where the other was when neither could still sleep sound without their bayards within reach.

Allura knelt next to his side of the bed and Lance couldn’t help but nuzzle into the gentle weight of her hand as she pulled the blankets low. “Use your words.” Again her smile, warm and welcoming and it still felt like tilting his face up to the sun whenever Allura looked at him like that. She brushed a slow thumb across the mark beneath his eye and the slow spread of quintessence crept across his cheeks like sunshine. The pink of her marks and the blue of his own, the dawning of lavender soft between them when she leaned in to brush her lips across his brow.

Lance grunted and pulled away, arching his spine and stretching past his aching hips as she pulled back and laughed. He flopped over on his back and the incessant pressure was back again. “She’s kicking again,” he said. “Melly’s gonna be one hell of a football player. Or a dancer. Or space ninja.” Lance flung an arm over his eyes and pinned the growing light of his marks against his cheekbones. “Anything she wants,” he whispered through a growing grin.

Warm fingers threaded through his own. “Anything she wants,” Allura echoed. Her hand ghosted low on his abdomen. “And what she wants right now is something to eat.” She gave his rounded belly a gentle pat. “Come on then, something for the both of you.”

“What if everything I want is right--”

Allura tapped a single finger against his lips and arched a single snowy eyebrow. “Everything _you_ want, yes, but Melenor is hungry.”

“And how do you know that? Maybe I just needed to roll over.”

“She told me.”

“Told you.”

Allura stood up and extended a hand. “Yes.”

“Even though she’s infesting _my_ gut.”

Her bright eyes glittered with repressed laughter. “Did you just refer to our daughter as a infestation?”

“Fine! She’s a temporary tenant, but she’ll owe me a lifetime’s worth of hugs and kisses for rent.” Lance groaned and swung his feet over the edge of the bed and waited on Melenor to settle down. A starburst of stretchmarks radiated from the center of his swelled abdomen. “Oh my _god_ how much longer?” He poked his belly button. “Any time now, _estrella bebé_.”

“Just another...” Allura tapped her pursed lips as she did the mental calculation and translation. “Month!” she finished proudly. She beamed at him. “Four weeks, I believe.”

“Getting better with the time conversion thing.” Lance planted his hands on either side of him on the mattress and pushed himself standing. “Hah! No wobbles this time!” A swift kick to his gut reminded him to get moving. “I don’t get it, you can remember the fifth cousin twice removed of at least a dozen diplomats you’ve seen in person _once_ , but Earth measurements of time keep tripping you up.”

Allura was at his side at once, one hand at his hip and the other at his shoulder. “ _They_ at least have the decency to use a logical hierarchy and naming conventions.”

Lance shrugged. “Blame it on the English language, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

The sweet scent of juniberries wafted through the open kitchen window. Lance took a seat at the table as Allura went to work putting leftovers in order for a late breakfast. She tied her hair into a rough bun, fringes drifting into her face, as she gathered food and talked about an upcoming diplomatic mission. His own Garrison tablet went untouched and no doubt bursting with messages.

How was this his life? After all the horrors and loss, how was this his life, bursting with light and life and love? His hands drifted low on his stomach to cup the swell of his belly. None of this planned or sought. So much of his youth burned away (even if years remained) in the desperate hope the war would just _end_ , that the suffering would just _stop_.

Hope was a foreign feeling.

Lance hadn’t felt it when everything unraveled around them, when Allura was on her knees and bleeding out quintessence in desperate last minute efforts to hold the threads of reality together. He hadn’t felt it when Allura turned to look at all of them with loss and determination writ in her features and “goodbye” on her lips.

He hadn’t felt it when he said “No,” before she could speak or when he took her hand. No more loss, no more waiting, no more goodbyes. “No,” he had said, brushing his thumbs across marks on her face burning and waning like the sunset. “We do this together.” He had opened himself as best he could, reaching for whatever tiny spark of quintessence the frail human heart could hope to offer.

Not enough. Never enough. But he wouldn’t let her go alone.

He hadn’t felt it when the others reached for them, placed hands on his shoulders and hers, not even when he felt their tiny sparks offered up next to the blazing galactic cauldron that was Allura. One life, no matter how bright, could bring more life to the emptiness by itself. But she wasn’t alone. Past paladins, present paladins, the hearts of the Lions themselves.

Life begets life.

Allura had reached for him first, tears spilling from eyes burning with some dangerous emotion he hadn’t been able to let himself name then. He hadn’t been able to name it when light and life and glory exploded around them and within them, the next big bang sparked from a small, huddled group of souls looking first to each other and then out to the darkness and saying, “No more.”

Lance had only been able to name that dangerous feeling after scrabbling desperate and greedy to hold that light and life within him. To hold on to Allura and the other paladins. To every light that would burn after. He had held on to that light and life long after it was safe to let go, held on long enough for Allura’s borrowed quintessence to spark his own to burn blue across his checkbones. Long enough for a heartbeat and long enough to name her Melenor.

“Lance?”

He jerked up, anchored back in the here and now.

Allura stood in front of him, two plates of food in her hands and her eyebrows creased in concern. “Are you alright?” Sunlight danced in the wisps of hair framing her face.

“I love you,” Lance blurted and blinked away tears.

She smiled and set the plates aside. Leaned down and close and brushed a kiss to his brow, his nose, his lips. “I love you, too, Lance,” she whispered warm against his mouth. She reached for one of his hands and pressed it against her heart. “Do you want to feel her heartbeat?”

Lance squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

Her quintessence flowed between them, the steady pulse and throb of a galactic core birthing new stars, his own the gentle ebb and flow of solar winds. And between them Melenor, a fragile new reality reaching to spread light in the darkness.


End file.
